A new Associated Press-NORC Center survey finds a small but real decline in fat former President Trump’s favorability among Republican voters dropping to 60 percent in June from 68 percent in April, while his unfavorability rating increased from 30 to 38 percent in the same period.

Yellow Trucking is on the verge of bankruptcy, which really isn’t news considering the company has been teetering on the edge for years.  Few of them, however, got a $700 million pandemic “loan” from the Trump Administration that granted the government 30% ownership of the company.

But wait:  it gets better.  A year prior to the federal government making a “Shark Tank”-style investment, a friend of Jared Kushner’s sunk a $600 million investment in the company–the same friend who loaned Kushner’s family’s real estate company a $184 million loan in 2019 AND the same friend who was awarded with a seat on a White House council.

According to the New York Times, Yellow may file bankruptcy within months as the company still struggles with exploding costs, a cash crunch, and lingering debt while it’s facing a potential Teamsters strike.  With 30,000 employees, Yellow’s bankruptcy wouldn’t likely halt operations, but it could impact a recovering supply chain as contractors and clients see how things shake out and look for other, potentially more stable options.

Take it with a grain of salt because it comes from the Alex Jones-aligned National File, but right-wing activists apparently caught Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin using a pseudonymous Twitter account to troll Trump supporters during a Twitterspace event .

Rightwing loon Lara Loomer was the first to suss out Griffin was using the @MaxNordau Twitter account, noticing the similarity of their voices when they spoke during the event.  The @MaxNordau account says it’s located “between two rivers”; Griffin owns a kombucha company located in an area of Tampa bordered by the Hillsborough and Alafia Rivers.  Griffin, of course, denies using a burner account to troll people, but given he’s chosen to work for DeSantis, his trustworthiness is questionable.

Susie Wiles, a long-time advisor to Donald Trump who is one of the leaders of his 2024 Stay Out of Prison Tour reelection campaign, is the individual referred to as “PAC Representative” in the special counsel’s criminal indictment to whom Trump reportedly showed a classified map, ABC News reports.

As described in the indictment from Jack Smith’s office, Trump reportedly showed Wiles a classified map of an unnamed country while he was discussing an unspecific military operation in August or September 2021 which Trump described as “not going well.”  According to the indictment, Trump told Wiles “[he] should not be showing [her]” that map and instructed her “not to get too close.”

Of course, Trump’s cabal denies any wrongdoing, telling the network when asked for a comment, “Jack Smith and the Special Counsel’s investigation is openly engaging in outright election interference and meddling by attacking one of the leaders of President Trump’s re-election campaign. This sham investigation by Joe Biden and his weaponized DOJ are clearly designed to inflict maximum political damage and to prevent President Trump … from reclaiming the White House.”

The fabric of space-time is replete with waves and valleys according to new findings by astronomers who report observing a “gravitational wave background,” a discovery that further verifies additional aspects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Per the Washington Post, astronomers using Earth-based telescopes were able to identify ripples and eddies in space-time caused by massive gravitational forces in the universe.  Einstein’s vision of the universe was not one of consistent space-time; instead, he imagined a varied, complex fabric where space-time was denser in some areas and thinner in others due to the influence of supermassive objects like black holes.  Instead of floating on the calm sea of a lake, the Earth is traveling more like it’s bobbing on choppy seas, being pushed from all directions.

In five papers published Wednesday, competing teams of astronomers in the US, Europe, India, Australia and China reported observing the same phenomena using similar processes and were all able to publish their independent research at the same time, thanks in part to negotiating by some leaders in the field who wanted to ensure the (literally) Earth-shaking science.  The simultaneous publication allows all teams to share credit for the discovery.

Founded 135 years ago by such luminaries as Alexander Graham Bell, National Geographic magazine laid off all its staff writers Wednesday in a planned reorganization by its latest owner, the Walt Disney Co., according to the Washington Post.  The magazine with the iconic yellow-bordered cover will continue on using contractors and freelancers.

With 1.8 million subscribers at the end of 2022, the magazine is still very popular with readers, but its content will now come from independent writers and photographers instead of its traditional stable of writers.  The last 17 left their jobs Wednesday in the latest round of layoffs, which also eliminated National Geographic’s audio division.

A little-known US intel agency responded on Wednesday to a September 2022 FOIA request from Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold, denying his request for documents relating to any “risk or damage assessments” requested or undertaken by the Department of Justice relating to Donald Trump’s possession of classified information that forwarded to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but in doing so noted that ODNI had done such assessments as far back as February.

The Defense Intelligence Agency–basically, the Pentagon’s independent intel collection and analysis group–noted that ODNI forwarded four documents, totaling eleven pages, that may meet the FOIA request, but DIA determined the information was too highly classified to release any of it.

Of course, they’d do a risk assessment, you’re thinking.  Well, yeah, but the existence of such an assessment would support Jack Smith’s charges against Trump based on the Espionage Act, which doesn’t require documents to be classified to be considered information regarding national defense.  A risk or damage assessment could play into Smith’s prosecution of Trump, demonstrating that the information was still pertinent to national security without having to prove Trump did not declassify the documents.

The US Department of Justice said in a court filing that a Florida law set to go into effect July 1st limiting the ability of some Chinese nationals from buying property in the state is unconstitutional and violates various federal laws, Politico reports.

Man of many -phobes–including homo-, trans-, lesbo-, oiko-, and biblio- among others–Republican Florida Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis added “Sino-” to the list as a way to bolster his rightwing credentials by heightening unreasonable fear that Chinese government officials are buying up real estate in the US; a similar Nipponophobic theme was popular  in the 1980s.

In the DOJ’s “statement of interest” filed with the federal court in Tallahassee, the government stated the law violates federal Fair Housing Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment:  “These unlawful provisions will cause serious harm to people simply because of their national origin, contravene federal civil rights laws, undermine constitutional rights, and will not advance the State’s purported goal of increasing public safety.”

For the second time in a week, a federal judge has blocked a Republican-led state legislation targeting medical care for transgender children, with Louisville Public Radio reporting Kentucky’s new law will not go into effect on Thursday as expected.  With a number of families with trans children as co-complainants, the ACLU filed suit in May contending the law violated the Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses.

This is the latest rejection of Republicans’ various legislative efforts to implement their trans- and homophobic agenda.  Different federal judges blocked Arkansas’s and Florida’s anti-trans care law last week.  Other bans including those Texas and Tennessee are currently being challenged.

In what could be a significant and bad break for fat former President Trump as far as the jury pool goes in his upcoming trial on 37 felony counts for stealing classified documents from the White House and hoarding them at Mar-a-Lago, CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane on Wednesday tweeted that federal Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres told the court that the initial pretrial hearings are being “held in Miami for security reasons (Miami has huge court complex). But case is headed to West Palm division of southern district of Florida.” If accurate this lessens what could’ve been an advantage for Trump as the jury pool would be 55 percent Biden voters and only 43 percent Trump voters. It only takes one for a hung jury, though it certainly lowers the odds of a MAGA scumbag blowing up the deliberations compared to redder Miami or Fort Pierce.

Totally not a Kremlin asset at all Robert F Kennedy Jr on Wednesday tweeted and then quietly deleted a pic of a model wearing a “Kennedy 24” hoodie. Nobody needed to do any reverse image search or anything to determine it was Russian because there’s fucking Cyrillic text on everything in the street scene it depicts. Even dumber is how the graphic artist did an actually really solid job placing the logo under the drawstrings on the hoodie the model is wearing, which had to have taken at least a good half hour to get right, more than enough time to realize the setting.

Russian General Sergei Surovikin, former top commander of Putin’s forces in Ukraine, has been arrested for some sort of connection to the failed Wagner mutiny, the Moscow Times reports. Surovikin has not been seen in public since Saturday when he put out what had been characterized as a “hostage video” pleading with his ally Yevgeny Prigozhin to stand down. “The situation with him was not ‘OK.’ For the authorities. I can’t say anything more,” a source told the Moscow Times.

What are we even doing anymore? https://t.co/HySm251XyO

— The Hill (@thehill) June 28, 2023

The Hill’s social media manager is apparently going through some things, as a Wednesday tweet linking to an article about a new Pepsi-flavored ketchup-like condiment seemed awfully like the opening to a suicide note. It would be far from the first time that the right-leaning and supposedly top-tier political news site would validate such stupid bullshit in its regular coverage without any of the self-awareness or levity other outlets would allow their staffs, but it would seem this banality may have been the final straw for the person running their Twitter account.

A new Marquette University Law School survey finds President Biden leading fat former President Trump 52 to 43 percent in Wisconsin in 2024. Biden vs DeSantis is closer at 49 to 47 percent.

Yes, it’s still early but goddamn that is definitely not where Trump wants to be in the 2020 tipping point state from a fairly reliable pollster, even while national show a tighter race between him and Biden – or even in the lead with the MAGA circlejerk pollsters like Harvard/Harris X and Emerson.

Worse, GOP-aligned pollster Public Opinion Strategies found Trump trailing Biden by 2 percent in both Arizona and Georgia and by 3 percent in Pennsylvania. As we’ve written before, swing state voters were endlessly tormented with the MAGA bullshit and “Stop the Steal” scams since the 2020 election, so it shouldn’t be a surprise they aren’t on board for more of it ahead of 2024.

Following up on CNN’s Tuesday report on drunken dumbass Rudy Giuliani’s recent interview with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team as they investigate the Trump regime’s post-2020 election coup attempt, the New York Times reportsthat the meeting was under the auspices of a potential cooperation agreement with the wetbrained former New York City mayor.

“The voluntary interview, which took place under what is known as a proffer agreement, was a significant development in the election interference investigation led by Jack Smith, the special counsel, and the latest indication that Mr Smith and his team are actively seeking witnesses who might cooperate in the case,” the Times wrote, which we copied verbatim to avoid potentially mangling its significance and/or mischaracterizing how close Rudy could be to flipping.

A Canadian Coast Guard ship on Wednesday brought to St John’s, Newfoundland the fragments of the OceanGate Expeditions Titan submersible for an examination of how the fucker imploded last week while on a dive to tour the wreck of the Titanic, the Associated Press reports.

The fragments of the submersible were recovered by an ROV operated by Boston-based Pelagic Research Services on Tuesday. It’s not clear if the American and Canadian agencies investigating the wreckage will be able to find any evidence of the elaborate plot to distract voters from the bombshell allegations against criminal mastermind Hunter Biden as was alleged by right wing media.

Former Trump White House Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, aka “Anonymous,” previewed a sequel to his book “A Warning” in Newsweek on Wednesday with a very brief excerpt revealing former Chief of Staff John Kelly getting revolted by the disgraced former president’s lust for Ivanka.

“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that once led John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter… Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man,'” Taylor writes in the upcoming “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” which also included Stephen Miller’s idea to bomb a refugee boat bound for the US.

Taylor’s a dick. He was all for separating migrant children from their parents. There’s a not small chance he’s exaggerating or embellishing this to sell more books. None of that makes this in any way unbelievable, knowing what we know from other sources about Donald’s sick regard for Ivanka.

On Tuesday newest MAGA hero whistleblower IRS agent Gary Shapley gave an interview with CBS News where he alleged that there was a vast conspiracy going all the way to the top of both the Trump and Biden Justice Departments to protect Hunter Biden and by extension Joe from criminal investigations into their supposed shady foreign business dealings and so on and so forth.

Unlike with previous “whistleblowers” propped up by other House GOP circlejerks this cycle, there’s no evidence that Shapely is currently on suspension for trying to sabotage investigations into Capitol rioters, is getting paid by Kash Patel, is trying to promote a book about his experience, or openly wishing Biden would die of cancer on social media. He seems, at this point at least, to be a legitimate actor even if his claims only hint at what was likely a messy reality that falls far short of the grand Deep State atrocity Republicans and their fanboys so badly want to be true.

The problem with Shapley is his representation: Former Charles Grassley senate office staffer Tristan Leavitt, a MAGA lawyer who was himself one of the witnesses who recently appeared before a hearing of spandex-wearing grapple freak Jim Jordan’s stupid “Weaponization” subcommittee. That’s a big fucking red flag right there. Yes, everyone’s entitled to representation, but if Shapley wants to be taken seriously, he would have done well to have hired a real whistleblower attorney and not some douche who’s suing the SEC over some massive conspiracy against the crypto industry.

Oh and cooperating the with Senate investigation into his claims rather than just the House’s. Telling Senate Dems to fuck off while giving the House GOP spank material isn’t a great look either.

See you at the groundbreaking. https://t.co/1kJZ2h3JZW

— President Biden (@POTUS) June 28, 2023

Real Americans are getting sick of leftist elitists weaponizing their “facts” for political gain. So what if Senator Tommy Tuberville didn’t vote for the socialist infrastructure plan that he’s saying he delivered for his constituents? It’s not like it’s a crime for him to imply that he did by omitting his actual record on the issue, and it definitely doesn’t mean swamp creature Joe Biden should get to virtue signal and spike the ball on Tuberville like this. It’s just so out of touch with the reality that Republican voters and Alabamans in particular want to believe in. Worse is how the libs are going to act like “Dark Brandon owned that lame-brained hick” with this tweet. Very disrespectful.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve given our best shot at articulating the nebulous anger and resentment MAGA voters feel after burns like this.